1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for transforming an application for a multi-modal interface; and, more particularly, to an apparatus and method for transforming an application for a multi-modal interface. The apparatus and method create a structure of an original application transformed according to the output characteristics of a user terminal in the format of contents, synthesizes the created contents with multi-modal information of the user terminal, detects multi-modal information received from the user terminal, and maps the detected multi-modal information to action information of the original application to generate an event.
This work was supported by the Information Technology (IT) research and development program of the Korean Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) and/or the Korean Institute for Information Technology Advancement (IITA) [2006-S-066-01, “Development of High Reliable Adaptive Middleware for u-Home”].
2. Description of Related Art
The use of Internet-accessible devices, such as PCs, PDAs, cellular phones, and watches, increases with the spread of ubiquitous environments that obscure a boundary between an indoor region and an outdoor region.
The devices have individual characteristics such as input/output characteristics, display sizes, and operating systems. Also, the devices have an individual user interface. For example, there are devices inputting data using a keyboard and a mouse, devices inputting data using a touchscreen, and devices inputting data using voice recognition without using a display.
With the establishment of the ubiquitous environments, the above devices are provided with user-centered interfaces. Such user-centered interfaces are collectively called ‘multi-modal interface’. User interfaces such as a keyboard and a mouse, voice recognition, gesture recognition, device pen, action recognition, touch recognition, and organism recognition are used to establish ubiquitous computing environments without using additional devices, thereby enhancing the user-centered working efficiency.
Due to the above reasons, the device is equipped with an application reflecting its various interface characteristics. That is, the application must reflect device performance such as the resolution of a display and the limitations of input/output devices and application functions such as the types of operating systems (e.g., Windows or LINUX) and the types of graphic libraries.
A conventional application design method reflects various characteristics according to user interfaces, leading to a great waste of time and manpower. Furthermore, the conventional application design method may require a full redesign process instead of ending in a simple porting process.
The conventional application design method is unsuitable because it may perform a redesign process in the ubiquitous environments.
What is therefore required is an application design method that can save the reprocessing cost and time and increase utility even in application update, by transforming an application automatically in real time according to every device with various characteristics by only one application writing process.